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Miracle (Miracol) Film Movement Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes and the IMDb by Harvey Karten Director: Bogdan George Apetri Screenwriter: Bogdan George Apetri Cast: Ioana Bugarin, Emanuel Parvu, Cezar Antal, Ovidiu Crisan, Valeriu Andriuta, Valentin Popescu Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 5/5/22 Opens: June 10, 2022 at New York’s Film Forum […]

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Sheep wander freely through the mostly rural setting of Bogdan George Apetri’s finely crafted psychological thriller. Cognitively stunted by selective breeding, they are typically characterised as unimaginative, disinclined to process what’s going on around them, yet here they see everything, like God watching over His flock in the form of a lamb. It’s a film very much concerned with moral reckoning and danger to the soul, though without, at any stage, really depending on investment in religion.

Ioana Bugarin is Cristina, a young novice whom we see depart from a convent one day to get a ride to a hospital in the city. It isn’t hard to figure out why a 19-year-old might be making such a surreptitious journey, why she might want to change into civilian clothes en route or why she might want to see a very particular doctor. Through this and her subsequent activities in the city,...

"Something this big is beyond me." What is the mystery hidden within this? Film Movement has unveiled an official US trailer for a Romanian religious / investigative drama titled Miracle, which originally premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival. This acclaimed film is about the possibility of actually discovering a real miracle, by following two separate storylines years apart. A young nun sneaks out of her monastery to attend an urgent matter but never makes it back. Followed years later by a police detective's investigation into her fate, uncovering clues and revelations that lead not only to the truth but a miracle as well. Reviews of the film are mostly positive, stating: "Simple in scope, yet complex and precise in its execution, the result is a marvel befitting its title." The film stars Ioana Bugarin, Emanuel Parvu, Cezar Antal, Ovidiu Crisan, and Valeriu Andriuta. I really do wonder what's going on in the film,...

The white-hot moment of the Romanian new-wave film renaissance is long in the past. “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” came out in 2005, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007. Other landmarks of Romanian cinema also now go back quite a ways, like “Police, Adjective” (2009), “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” (2010), and “Graduation” (2016). That’s not to say there haven’t been good Romanian films of late — earlier this year, I championed Two Lottery Tickets, a kind of droll Romanian Jim Jarmusch film. The bitter truth, though, is that over the last decade the profile of international impact and acclaim that Romanian cinema once held has radically diminished.

It might jump-start again with the appearance of “Miracle,” one of the best films I’ve seen at the Venice Film Festival. It’s the third feature written and directed by Bogdan George Apetri, and it shares many of the classic qualities of Romanian cinema.

After exploring the blossoming romance between two young Romanian women in his first feature, “Several Conversations About a Very Tall Girl,” Bogdan Theodor Olteanu returns with a charged sophomore effort that looks at the fallout when a young actress splits from the boyfriend who slapped her in a jealous fit.

“Mia Misses Her Revenge” stars Ioana Bugarin as a woman reeling from the act of violence that brought her relationship to a sudden, bitter end. Determined to get even, she decides to make a sex tape as a form of revenge – a plan that proves to be easier said than done. Crippled by indecision and self-doubt, she finds her convictions put to the test by a cast of characters who have their own opinions about how she should respond.

Written and directed by Olteanu, “Mia Misses Her Revenge” won a Jury Special Mention after its 2020 premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival.

Miracle is Romania’s first entry to a competitive section of Venice in 12 years.

Memento international has boarded sales on New York-based Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri’s third feature Miracle ahead of its world premiere in Venice’s Horizons section in September.

Divided into two chapters, the crime tale opens on a young nun who sneaks out of her isolated monastery to attend to an urgent matter but never makes it back.

The second chapter follows a police detective’s investigation into her fate, which uncovers clues and revelations that lead not only to an unfathomable truth but possibly,...

The Romanian director is putting the finishing touches to his third feature, an independent film that he shot before the pandemic. After his feature debut, Outbound (2010), it took US-based Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri almost a decade to finish his second feature, Unidentified (2019), but he is certainly not waiting that long for his third effort: Miracle, an independent film that he shot before the pandemic, will soon wrap post-production. The project is being staged by Apetri and Oana Iancu through their new production company The East Company Productions (Romania). The co-production companies are Cineart TV Prague (Czech Republic), represented by Viktor Schwarcz, and Tasse Film (Latvia), represented by Aija Bērziņa. The screenplay, written by Apetri, follows Cristina (Ioana Bugarin), a 19-year-old nun, as she finds herself at a crossroads in her life. We see her sneaking out of her monastery in order to attend to an urgent matter...

The story about a young actress trying to get even with her violent boyfriend also questions the idea of empathy. Two years after releasing the micro-budget LGBT drama Several Conversations About a Very Tall Girl, which earned four Gopo Award nominations in 2019, Romanian director Bogdan Theodor Olteanu returns to the limelight with a new independent, female-centred drama, Mia Misses Her Revenge. The exclusively Romanian project was produced by Anamaria Antoci and Anda Ionescu through Tangaj Production, and co-produced by Sub25 and Papillon Film. The film will shortly world-premiere in the 1-2 Competition of this year’s Warsaw International Film Festival (9-18 October). Promoted as a “darkly comic revenge story”, the film, written by Olteanu, follows Mia, a young actress who is plunged into a deep emotional crisis after her jealous boyfriend slaps...